cream of leek & zucchini soup.

I love zucchini! It's an under-appreciated vegetable, for sure. Maybe that is because it tends to overtake people's backyard gardens and produce an abundance that you can't make a dent in, no matter how many loaves of zucchini bread you make. But, I guess I have a thing for underdog vegetables.



A few days ago I was visiting my friend (you know, the one with the chickens) and she offered me some leftover soup for lunch. I never turn down a free lunch, and I love to try new soups. This one is going straight into the recipe box- the flavor was perfect, the creaminess lent it a satisfying richness, and the zucchini made me feel like I was eating something reasonably healthy. A small cup was the perfect amount for a light lunch.

I asked my friend for the recipe, so she sent it on over:

From Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant:

(Serves 6)
Ingredients:
3-4 leeks, rinsed well and chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
3-4 medium zucchini, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
1 tablespoon dried tarragon (Editor's note- I would immediately think that I'd want to use fresh, but I asked Alia and she said she used dried, and it tasted fantastic, so carry on, y'all- maybe garnish with some fresh tarragon on top if you're feeling crazy?)
1-1 1/2 teaspoons ground fennel seeds
freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons flour
3 cups vegetable stock
1 cup heavy cream

Directions:
In a medium soup pot, on medium heat, saute the leeks and onions in the olive oil and butter until the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. (Editor's note, again- 10 minutes? That seems like a really long time. It really only takes like 2 or 3 minutes tops to sweat some onions.) Stir in the zucchini, salt, and garlic. Saute for 10 more minutes, until the zucchini is tender(Editor's- Wait, REALLY? 10 minutes? That's a long time to saute stuff, am I crazy? Zucchini is pretty delicate, too- it gets mushy really fast. Saute at your own discretion). Add the tarragon, fennel, and black pepper. Cook for a couple of minutes. Remove half of the vegetables and set aside.

Sprinkle the flour into the soup pot, stirring, until the vegetables are well coated. Whisk in the stock. Heat, stirring frequently, until the soup begins to thicken. Remove it from the heat. When the soup has cooled a little, puree it in a blender or food processor and return it to the pot.

Add the reserved vegetables and heat the soup to simmering. Stir in the cream or milk. Take care not to let the soup boil.



Despite my reservations about the cooking times presented in the recipe, this soup was delicious- so don't mind me. Just do what you do when you make soup. I especially love that it's only partially blended, with some large chunks- it gives it a creaminess but still maintains some texture in the zucchini. Perfect! Get your soup on while it's still chilly- tomorrow March begins and it's all downhill to spring time!

Actually, I just thought about it for a minute, and I guess the 10 minutes direction makes sense (at least for the zucchini). Since this soup doesn't simmer for a long time, you'll want the veggies to be fully cooked during the saute portion, rather than with a chicken soup or something brothy, where you can just sweat the veggies and then let them finish cooking in broth. Never mind my rambling!

in the kitchen with

I was recently asked to fill out an interview with Cafemom for their "In the kitchen with" blog. The interview and photos are up, so if you are interested in knowing more about me and my kitchen, check it out!

http://www.cafemom.com/dailybuzz/food_party/3284/In_the_Kitchen_With_Bread_Honey

Golden Sichuan Restaurant, Haymarket Chinatown

Professional trencherman. I think that's what I'd like to put on my next business card.It's the one word which is actually meaningful on the garbled Chinglish ode to Sichuan cuisine at the entrance to Golden Sichuan Restaurant. A trencherman, according to the dictionary, is a hearty eater, its origin explained by its medieval usage as some who "frequents another's table; a hanger-on or parasite".

gumbo

Oh lord, if I don't post this now, it will NEVER get posted. We had gumbo the other night, dudes!



My husband and his coworkers decided to have an impromptu gumbo cook-off, and he was immediately in muddy waters. One of his coworkers is originally from the south, and the other does a lot of southern cooking. I didn't get a chance to taste the other offerings, but I'm sure they were delicious.



Let me be frank- you can put whatever the hell you want in gumbo. It's just a big ol' messy pot of gravy-like sauce, some meat, some particular spices, and vegetables. For this version, we made some decisions based on two variables- whether or not our son could/would eat it, and The Competition. Because we had a toddler to take into account, my husband chose a smoked beer sausage that really tasted like a mildly spicy hot dog. Andouille sausage would have been more traditional, and probably a little tastier, but we weren't sure if the little dude would dig it. Plus, he wanted to go with something a little less traditional, figuring that the other dudes were going traditional all the way. I would have liked a little shellfish action, but we weren't sure about the whole allergen thing (our son is only 2 1/2) so we wussed out and put fried catfish on top instead. Overall, it was very good. I don't know if it won the contest, but the effort was valiant and the result was delicious.



For this gumbo, we did:

1 rough chopped green bell pepper
2 rough chopped stalks of celery
1 yellow onion, diced
Some sausage (we used 'smoked beer sausage' but andouille would be best)
Chicken thighs & drums, bone-in
Green onion for garnish
minced garlic
File (I'm too lazy to find the accent mark- that's like Fee-lay) Powder
Bay leaf
Salt & Pepper
pinch of chili powder
Few splashes of wine
3-4 cups of good stock (homemade is best).
handful of all purpose flour

In a small pot, heat stock. Then, melt a pat of butter in a big huge pot, and saute vegetables until they begin to soften. Deglaze the pot with a small amount of white wine, allow to burn off for a moment, then dump veggies onto a plate and reserve for later. Add a little more butter (or some oil) and dump in some chopped sausage, (not all of it, just a good handful or so.) and allow some of the fat to render in the pan. Remove the sausage, then throw in a handful of flour and whisk into a roux. You want to cover the bottom of the pan with roux, so if you don't have enough butter, go ahead and add some more. Keep whisking and let the roux toast until it reaches a nutty brown color (Or go darker, if you'd like. Apparently Jason's coworker simmers his roux for up to 2 hours to get it very thick and dark. Crazy!) and then add the hot stock gradually while stirring. Bring to a quick boil, then immediately reduce to a simmer. Throw in a bay leaf, a pinch of chili powder, and some file powder. At this point, you can add your chicken, the whole legs, to the pot. Try to get them covered with the liquid (which should be pretty thick, but still rather soupy). Cover and let simmer until chicken is cooked. (How are you going to know if it's cooked? Holy crap, that's a good question. Just remember if you get impatient and pull them before they're done, it's gonna get added back in and finish cooking anyway.) When the chicken is done, pull the legs out and shred them on a cutting board, and then add meat back in. Add vegetables and sausage, and let the whole pot bubble and simmer. Keep tasting it, keep stirring it. Add what you need and let it go for awhile. (Ours was on the stove for like 3 hours.)

Serve over white rice, and top with cubes of pan-fried (dredged quickly in flour) catfish if you desire.



This was so hearty that one small bowl filled me up. There was plenty leftover, most of which got taken into work with my husband. The next day we had barely enough leftover for like, maybe one or two servings (after taking most of the leftovers to work, I mean- there would have been plenty.) so I chopped up some carrots, celery, and zucchini, and quickly sauteed them before adding the gumbo to the pan to heat up. Basically I just stretched it out a little, and it was very tasty.



And I don't want any southern folk getting on my case if this is like, ALL WRONG, either, because first of all- I didn't make it, and second of all, I've never even had real southern gumbo. Relax! It's just a big old pot of delicious, that's all. You don't have to get tricky with it. If you use good sausage, the whole damn thing is just gonna taste like sausage anyway, and I can't complain about that.

Eveleigh Farmers' Market

Don't forget the Eveleigh Farmers' Market officially starts this Saturday. One presumes there'll be no suckling pigs on offer like last year's Christmas Market but an undercover weekly farmers market in the inner city is just what Sydneysiders want and need.View Larger MapEveleigh Farmers' MarketEvery Saturday 8am-1pm243 Wilson Street, Darlingtonnear the corner of Codrington Streetabout a ten

omg, eggs!

Oh my god! What would you do if your friend sent you home with 6 fresh eggs from her backyard flock of chickens? I want to hard-boil and just eat at least 1 of them. I'm thinking something with runny/raw yolks, maybe a pasta dish with raw yolks or some kind of spicy rice thing, I don't know. They're pretty small, too. A friend of mine was recently describing a snack she made by cutting a hole out of a leftover dish of vegetable gratin and cracking an egg in the middle, should I do that?

A quick trip to the US of A

Pop Tarts $8.95Growing up on a diet of Judy Blume, Trixie Belden, Paul Zindel and Robert Cormier novels, it was always the paragraphs about American food that intrigued the most.What were these magical treats called Tootsie Rolls, Twinkies and Kool-Aid? In an era pre-Internet--yes really!--these unknown mysteries could only be pictured in my imagination. For years I pictured a bowl filled with

well, hello.

Well, it's true. Summer is off pursuing her design interests full time, and between me working every weekend, baby-sitting during the week, and hunting down freelance work wherever I can (drop me a line!), things around here have been placed on the back burner, so to speak. (Sorry. I know that was a terrible pun.)

So, now you're stuck with me! I feel like I should address some slight changes now that the lineup has shuffled- the most important and glaringly obvious one being that I DON'T BAKE. I know, stop the presses. We never got around to making an F.A.Q. for this blog, but if we did, it would have looked something like this:

Q: "How do you find the time to do all this?!"
A: We're both stay-at-home moms. It takes a lot of time, actually, and for awhile we made plenty of time for it, but lately we've been finding ourselves with less and less time to do fancy things. So it goes! Life with children is constantly evolving.

Q: "How do you eat all this stuff without gaining a million pounds?!"
A: Er, I don't. Summer eats some of it, but it usually gets (or used to get) evenly distributed between friends and family. I actually try to eat as healthy as possible and I've put a lot of work into my diet over the last year or so, and I avoid pastries like the plague, generally speaking. The problem is that I find them ADORABLE and I love taking photographs of them. But yeah, I don't bake. Well, I bake bread. Rarely. And usually just so I can take cute pictures of it. And I always bake mini-loaves.

Q: "What kind of camera do you use?!"
A: A canon 20D with a kit lens and a 50mm 1.8 lens.

There! The F.A.Q. you've been waiting for, all this time.

Anyway, I can't promise that I'l maintain updates as frequently in the past (actually, I think I've already proven that I can't maintain the momentum we once had, but whatever.) but I do plan to update whenever we cook something that seems interesting. Our weekly menus are usually just a mishmash of old standards- pasta night, salad night, stir fry night, roast veg and meat night, etc.- we eat as cheap and healthy as possible, for the most part. Occasionally we splurge and do something fun. When that happens, I'll be happy to share it here.

I also plan to showcase guest blogs from a lot of my friends- Portland has an amazing food community, and working in the food industry for so long means that I can get my hands on some neat people to contribute. I want to feature locally produced foods, as close to farm-to-table as possible. (can I squeeze in a few more foodie buzz words please? I'm avoiding the dreaded "locavore" for all your sakes.) I want to show what my friends make in their home kitchens, their work kitchens, and more, and I'd like it to be pertinent to you, the reader. Because if nobody was reading this, frankly- I wouldn't bother, haha.

So! As always, keep an eye on this space, watch as it evolves. For time killers, there's always my flickr page which I update pretty much daily. (Warning- contains about 8 bajillion pictures of my 2 1/2 year old son. Borrrring!) I just started a new blog called ten dollar drawings where I am offering (omg! surprise!) drawings for 10 bucks. My personal website will be getting an overhaul as soon as I get around to it (oh man, that's a laugh), and dang, I think that's about it unless you want to be my facebook buddy and read my stupid status updates that say crap like, "Alicia Carrier is so full of gumbo." Excitement!

I love hearing from you, so if you have any questions or requests for future posts, let me know. Have a lovely evening, tomorrow I'm looking forward to getting in on a gumbo taste-off with my husband's coworkers. The results will be posted here, of course. ("Wait, that's not healthy!" "SHUT UP.")

Harry's Bar de Ville at Bay Tinh, Marrickville

Bo luc lacTender beef cubes sauteed in special sauceserved with pepper and lemon juice"Toto, I don't think we're in Marrickville anymore..."Except we are in Marrickville, and we're in a bar. A bar. With cherry red textured floral wallpaper, and wall-to-wall timber and fancy light fittings. Are you sure I'm not in Newtown?I say this because the change in Marrickville's landscape over the past

so long...

I am going to make this rather short, since I have never been one for long, dramatic goodbyes, especially in the world of blogging. Recently, I have found myself lacking the passion and means for continuous food-related updating, spending the majority of my online time blogging over here. And so, I have decided to hand over Bread & Honey to my friend and up-until-now co-blogger Alice. Besides, she is the one who takes all those gorgeous photographs you all know and love.

As for my future in food blogging, I think I am going to start a side blog to my regular website centered only around the sweet side of the food world (and of course, the beautiful design that surrounds it.) We'll see how that goes.

Anyways, so long. I have had a lovely time doing this. Take it from here, Alice!

xoxo,
Summer

1000 posts prize giveaway: The lucky winners!

Everybody likes freebies, and it was clear that readers agreed with a flood of entries for the prize giveaways celebrating 1,000 posts on Grab Your Fork. A whopping 852 entries were received in total.I wish that everyone could win, but alas, there will only be eight lucky people shrieking over their emails this morning. Congratulations to all the winners - you should have already received your

Lowenbrau Keller, The Rocks, Sydney

Schweinshaxn $31Oven-roasted pork knuckle with sauerkraut, Löwenbräu bier sauce and mashed potatoYou've just had chocolate for breakfast. What would you have for lunch?Pork knuckle.Of course.Because I'm with chocolatesuze and if there's one thing I've learnt from my eating adventures with her, it's that she's always ready to move onto her next feast.There's a kind of wild woman crazy-eyed look

martha stewart hard boiled eggs.

I feel like most of my posts start the same way- blah blah blah, when I was a kid, I was a picky eater, now I'm not, blah blah blah. I can't remember the first time I tried a hard boiled egg, (it wasn't that long ago) but I love them now. I often forget they exist- and when I remember, I'm like- HEY! You can do that? Let's do it right now! I'm not the type to keep hard boiled eggs around, usually I just make them when the mood strikes and eat them right away. That's what I did today. I crumbled some on a salad, and the sliced one and ate it with a pinch of sea salt.



If you google "perfect hard boiled egg" you'll find that everyone is an expert when it comes to boiling eggs. I've read a lot of recipes that say to boil for 10 full minutes, but that sounds crazy to me! Considering how easy it is to overcook scrambled eggs or fried eggs, I can't imagine applying that much consistent heat. I'm in the Martha Stewart, "bring it to a boil & let it sit" camp. Cover eggs with cold water, bring to a rolling boil, then cover and remove from heat. Let them sit for 12 minutes and then rinse with cool water to halt the cooking process. I don't know what makes a perfect hard boiled egg, because I'm lazy and this is the only way I've ever tried to do it, but they're never overcooked and that's all that matters to me. Nobody likes a gross green yolk.



The only thing I hate is peeling the damn things, I suck at it. Oh well.

For the Love of Food: 50 of the World's Best Food Blogs

Food blogs are finally in fashion.After several years of having to explain a) what is a blog and b) why I photograph my meals, it seems that finally, finally, people get it. At least in the UK, anyway.On Wednesday of this week, the UK Times Online headlined their Food & Drink section with the article The Art of Food Blogging. Far from a quirky personality piece about eccentric foodies, Lynne

Spicy Lentil Soup with Lime

First of all, thank you all for your lovely wishes and kind messages on the previous post. Little Nora Adeele and I spent 10 days in the maternity clinic growing and recuperating (with K. by our side every night, feeding me and the clinic staff with his delicious cannelés). We've been back home for over a week now, and I'm happy to report that our wee girl has already gained 400 grams on top of her birth weight, purely on breast milk diet, so she's doing well.

As we're still learning each other's daily routines, my cooking has been erratic and quick. Something that can be whipped up within minutes and then left unattended until I can finally eat it, with baby on one arm and spoon in another. This soup is a good example. I made it yesterday - it demands about 10 minutes hands-on time (for peeling and chopping the onions and carrots), and then couple of stirring motions every now and then. I've had many a lentil soup this winter, and this is definitely one of the favourite ones, with lime juice adding a lovely and different zing to it.

Spicy Lentil Soup with Lime
(Vürtsikas läätsesupp laimiga)
Adapted from Olive (October 2007), a British food magazine
Serves 4

1 Tbsp oil
grated fresh ginger (about 1 cm chunk)
1 tsp cumin seeds
a generous pinch of chilli flakes
1 medium-sized onion, peeled and roughly chopped
3 large carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces or coarsely grated
150 g red lentils ('Egyptian lentils')
1 litre vegetable stock (I used Swiss Marigold)
1 lime

Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan. Add grated ginger, cumin seeds and chilli flakes and heat for about a minute, stirring to avoid burning.
Add onions and carrots and heat for about 5 minutes on a moderate heat, stirring regularly.
Add lentils and the stock.
Bring into a boil and simmer on a low heat for 15-20 minutes, until lentils are softened.
Blend the soup into a silky pureé and season with lime juice (and salt and pepper, if you think it's necessary).
Garnish with some chilli flakes and lime zest and serve.

Boon Chocolates, Darlinghurst

I couldn't imagine going into business with my brother. Or any family member. But brother and sister team Alex and Fanny Chan have done just that, and look sheepishly happy for it.It's been a series of serendipitous events and deliberate detours that led to the creation of Boon Chocolates, one of the latest handmade chocolate boutiques to open in Sydney. Listening to her heart and making a

Origami 101: DIY Chopstick Rest

In case anyone was wondering, this is how you make a chopstick rest out of the chopstick paper wrapper...with thanks to the G-man for acting as hand model.Stylish, functional and a great time-filler whilst waiting for your food to arrive.

Wakana Yakiniku Restaurant, Artarmon

Kuriimu korotte $10.00Cream croquetteThere's always something happening when you eat yakiniku. Yakiniku, or grilled meat, involves a smoking hot grill, lots of dishes arriving on your already crowded table, and a frenetic pace of food photography. Argh!But when the food tastes this good, you want to capture each detail. We head to Wakana on the recommendation of M&L, a non-descript restaurant on

Interview rescheduled

Just a quick note that ABC Sydney will be broadcasting the Melbourne memorial service this Sunday, as part of the National Day of Mourning to honour those affected by the Victorian bushfires.As a result, the aforementioned interview segment on food writing has had to be rescheduled. I will advise the new air date and time in the week prior.If you would like to make a donation to the Victoria

beef stew: a guest blog

Photographs by Matt Sanders.

This recipe comes from my buddy Matt. Remember Matt? He's the darling who showed us all how to can peaches. How domestic! The same day I went over to his house to photograph the peaches, he was kind enough to serve me some leftover beef stew for lunch. It was delicious, and I made a mental note to bug him for his recipe. Recently he dropped me a line to let me know that he was making it, and then- because I was too lazy to come over and take pictures, he provided me with these lovely photographs in addition to his recipe! Score! Life couldn't be any easier for a blogger, haw haw.



Here's what he has to say:

Ingredients-
-Center cut Beef shanks
-Bacon
-Onions
-Shallots (or leeks)
-Red wine (something decent enough to drink)
-Beef stock (or water)
-Carrots, Potatoes, Parsnips, or other winter root vegetables
-Garlic
-Rosemary
-Tomato
-Mushrooms (i like criminis, but white buttons work very well too)
-Salt (kosher is awesome, sea is rad) and Pepper (fresh ground plz)



"No measurements or quantities- stew is flexible. Wing it, make it once, adjust as you go or for what you like. For example, if you don't want your stew to be as sweet, cut out the red wine, or use less, and fill in with beef stock. The best cut of meat i've found for doing beef stew is a Center Cut Shank, with the bone still in. It is anywhere from 2-4 dollars cheaper than precut "stew meat," which is an old grocery trick. Precut "stew meat" might be from fairly high quality cuts, but it's never labeled as what they are, and what you get may not be good for braising or slow cooking. AND- they're usually old. When meat gets close to its pull date, if you re-cut it, it counts as new product with a new pull date. It's a strange loophole that even the best markets participate in, so your stew meat: probably old. Ask your butcher to cut it for you if you're worried, but still, get a cut of meat that can withstand a long, slow cook. I love the center cut shank because its got those two little bones in it. They add TONS of flavor to a stew. If you don't yet know the joy of marrow, oh man. That's a whole other tangent, we're talking about stew here.




So, ideally you'd want to use some sort of heavy cast iron or enamel dutch oven style action to make this dish in. It will make it better in the long run, but not everyone has one on hand. A stainless steel pot will work just fine, just stay away from anything non-stick. Cut up two strips of bacon in little chunks and cook, but don't brown them. Just get the fat to render a little bit.

While that is cooking, cut your beef shank into bite-sized chunks, and if you desire, trim off any wild chunks of excess fat (but that will be to the detriment of your end product). Brown the beef in the bacon fat with just a little bit of salt and pepper over it. Depending on the size of your pot, you might have to do this in batches. Once the beef is browned on the outside, remove it and the bacon chunks from the pot. Toss in diced onion and shallot, and let them soften (again, just a touch of S+P), and let the bottom of the pan get a little glaze-y. Once they're ready to go, toss in the big marrow-bones from your shank, and enough wine to de-glaze the bottom of the pot.

Once that gets simmering, toss in chopped parsnips, carrots, potatoes and celery. Reintroduce the beef and bacon at this step too. Depending on the kind of stew you prefer, you can add your carrots and potates later in the game, so they don't get totally sloppy. Now, add in enough beef stock and wine so that the meat and vegetables are almost covered, but you can still see everything, don't go overboard. There's no set amount to this, but you're basically doing a giant reduction, so you don't want the stew to be too wet; you'll end up with a wicked soup, but not exactly something as thick or hearty as a stew, so be careful. Bring the pot to a boil but only for a minute or two, crank that sucker down to as low as your oven will go, and just let it simmer and sit.




About halfway through your cook time, you should ladle out about a cup or two of liquid from the pot. Throw that in a sauce pan along with a little bit more wine. Dice up some garlic, and mushrooms. Throw a sprig of rosemary in there with half a tomato with the seeds removed. Get this little dude simmering and reducing down, and you'll have an intense, bright, sunny and non-starchy thickening agent on your hands. Reduce this into a thick sauce, take the rosemary sprig out, and throw it back into the stew...the mushrooms will be intensely flavored and really stand out in the stew.



Now, 3-6 hours later, you should have some bangin' stew. Pair it with some no-knead bread, some sharp cheddar cheese, the same wine that you put into the stew, and some bright, ripe, sliced oranges for desert, and you've got a meal that will make the last few months of winter here actually bearable. The only disappointment though (editor's note: this disappoints you?), is that this stew, like many soups and thick concoctions will taste about a billion times better the next day. Unless you're feeding a family of 8, you'll have leftovers for sure."

Grab Your Fork goes live on air

EDIT: Interview has been rescheduled due to broadcast of the Victoria bushfires memorial service in Melbourne. Will advise new interview date/time if and when it happens.Grab Your Fork goes live!I'll be interviewed on 702 ABC Sydney this Sunday, along with John Newton and Chris Mansfield on a discussion panel about food writing.Simon Marnie, host of 702 Weekends and long-time follower of Grab

Salted chocolate and cranberry cookies

Sydney weather has turned of late. Is it summer or winter? From week to week, Mother Nature weather can't seem to make up her mind.This weekend has been cold and wet. Last weekend was hot and dry. Two weekends ago it was unbelievably hot. That dry suck-the-breath-out-of-you kind of hot where your body radiates heat and trees seem to shimmer in the distance.What did we do? We had a picnic of

The definition of romance

It's Valentine's Day today. I've never really bought into the whole overpriced-roses-on-one-token-day-of-the-year concept, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in romance. Because as much as men think that women are swayed by expensive jewellery, five-star dining and miniature carry bags in Tiffany blue, the best way to worm your way into any girl's heart is time and effort. Trust me on this one

Crocodile Farm Hotel, Ashfield

$10 rump steak specialwith mushroom sauce, salad and chipsYou wouldn't expect to find a swanky bar in downtown Ashfield, but here we are at the Crocodile Farm Hotel and the recent revamp is obvious. Upstairs there's a flood of natural light, a balcony with giant plasma screen, booth seating and sleek white tables and chairs. It seems a world away from Shanghai Night across the road, but that's

Passionflower, Sydney

Final Fantasy $14.00Black sesame and coconut ice creams accompanied by cool refreshing pieces of black jellydrowned in a shot of evaporated milkI remember when the cinema section of George Street was never-ending scaffolding, wooden board footpaths and giant long-abandoned holes in the ground. Now the area is filled with shiny buildings, trendy apartment complexes, and new restaurants and cafes

more beans.

Recently my good friend Alia bought a sweet little home in outer SE Portland, the area where I am poking around. Until we figure out this home buying thing (I'm taking Home Buying 101 through the Portland Housing Center at the end of the month, very exciting!) I've been living vicariously through my buddies who have been lucky enough to get into some lovely little houses. Alia told me that last year, a persistent little green vine kept poking its way to the top of her compost heap. After covering it over and over, not really thinking about what it might be, she finally felt bad and pulled the whole thing out (it turned out to be several inches long!) and planted it. As it grew, it revealed that it was a bean plant. She pulled the pods open and was surprised to see little spotted pinto beans! The plant hardly produced enough beans to mention, but she ended up with a good handful, which she dried, and plans to plant this spring. I can't wait to help her pick, dry, and cook them. (Or at least photograph the process. By the way, if you've got sharp eyes- yes, the photo above pictures pinto beans and sunflower seeds. She had them in the same jar.) Hopefully by this time next year we'll be getting ready to buy our own home, and when I start thinking about the endless gardening possibilities, my eyes glaze over. Thoughts of rain barrels, chicken coops, worm bins- you know, hippie stuff. I can't wait to show my son how to grow vegetables. One of my favorite things to do when I was a kid was walk out to the garden and pull up carrots, rinse them with the hose, and eat them with the tops still on (usually while impersonating Bugs Bunny). I also enjoyed (and still do) eating green beans raw, straight off the vine. My mom usually got pretty pissed if I snagged all her beans, but it was worth it.

Tet Festival, Fairfield Showground

Fresh sugar cane juiceThe Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year. The Vietnamese call it Tet. Every year Tet is celebrated by Sydney's Vietnamese community, culminating in a huge festival open to all. For years this event had been held at Warwick Farm, but this year it made the move to the Fairfield Showground. Speedy and I headed over to check out all the action with friends - a first time visit for

Plan B by becasse, Sydney

This little piggy went to Becasse.This little piggy went to Plan B.It's hard to tell which excited me more: the prospect of sinking my teeth into one of Justin North's famous wagyu burgers, or watching a delivery man hoist a whole pig onto his shoulder and walk past us into Becasse.Because it's not often that restaurants use and order whole pigs anymore. Whole pigs with heads still attached are

Taste of Sydney Festival media launch

Does any city do al fresco dining better than Sydney?The Taste Festival finally comes to Sydney after its inception in London, and a rapid-fire international take-up in cities including Dublin, Dubai, Cape Town and Melbourne. The concept allows the public to sample some of Sydney's hottest and best restaurants in the outdoor sunshine of Centennial Park over four days in March.Jared Ingersoll of

Chinese New Year Banquet at Makan at Alice's, Thornleigh

Course #1: Yee sangIt's a family tradition of ours to celebrate birthdays by eating out together at a restaurant. The two Aquarians always get a combined celebration and at their behest, we headed to Makan at Alice's for their annual Chinese New Year banquet.Readers with good memories will remember that I'd already attended and blogged this banquet last year. Sadly the menu remains exactly the

excuses, excuses.

I feel like ever since the new year, I've been showing up sporadically to make excuses for why I'm not updating this blog. Do I really need to make excuses for why I'm not blogging? How silly. Life gets in the way, of course! I'm working a second job now (nannying for a good friend, it's great!) and preparing for a lot of big things: trying to purchase a home- this is a long way off, practicing drawing every day in anticipation of going to tattoo school, so I can become a tattoo artist- these things are keeping me very busy! When we were in our heyday, Summer & I were churning out baked goods daily, chatting over coffee and updating as much as 3 times a day, but I put a lot of things aside to get this blog going. To be quite frank, I don't get paid to do this, and I don't particularly have the inclination to hassle people to put up ads so I can get paid doing it, it's a LOT of work to churn out all these photographs on a daily basis, especially when I have a lot of other things to do (in the creative sense, and just the general- I'm a mom, after all).

So here, may I offer you these beans? They're lovely, right? I soaked them overnight (2 cups of kidney, 1 cup pinto) and cooked them this morning until they were not quite finished. I cooled them off, popped them in the refrigerator, and tossed them into a huge batch of chili this evening- enough to keep us set for a few days. This was bare-bones chili, the "Oh crap, we're out of food" chili, with half a large red onion, a small white onion, a handful of garlic, a single carrot, one 12 ounce can of fire roasted tomatoes, a few bay leaves, and about 2 cups of water. I sauteed the veggies, tossed in the tomatoes and water, dumped in the beans, and let it simmer for about an hour and a half until the liquid reduced, the beans were fully cooked, and the whole thing came together. Seasoned liberally with chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, & salt. It was the perfect cool weather dinner (after a few days of sunshine, here we are, back to the dreary grey Portland winter) and it'll be the perfect lunch for me, my son, and our little friend that I'm watching tomorrow afternoon.

So forgive me, readers. Despite being too lazy to update, I'm still checking stats obsessively (of course) so I can see that you are all still coming back every day, hoping for something new. It's not that I want to disappoint anyone, the problem is that I don't really eat anything exciting. We have a pretty solid revolving menu in our house of things like pasta with canned sauce, brown rice & steamed vegetables, salad night, etc. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day, it's kind of pathetic (granola with plain yogurt and honey). But, a light at the end of the tunnel! A friend of mine is planning to make his spectacular beef stew next week, and I can't wait to photograph and eat it. Another good friend has a small backyard flock of chickens, and she's been making fresh pasta with her amazingly fresh eggs. We keep meaning to get together and make a "thousand layer" lasagna. So, don't give up on us. The year is young. (And if you get bored, visit my flickr for daily updates, it's not all food, but it's still something to stare at.)

Ten Ren Cha for Tea, Chatswood

Lemon green tea with ai-yu gelatin $7.50Green tea ice cream with red bean icee and qq $7.50Lemon green tea with ai-yu gelatin $6.50I'm hopeless when it comes to ordering from a menu. It's a serious undertaking that requires assessment, adventure and a little bit of intuition.So when I first open the menu at Ten Ren Tea in Chatswod, I'm a little taken aback. There are over 200 different drinks

El Jannah, Granville

You can smell the charcoal from a block away. Its smoky tendrils waft toward us, taunting us, calling us, whetting our appetite and making our footsteps to El Jannah just that little bit faster.El Jannah means paradise or heaven in Arabic. It's a spiritual destination that many of El Jannah's most loyal customers profess to visit. The friend who recommended it to me closed her eyes as she told me

Chinese New Year Parade, Sydney

Chinese lion dancersThe Chinese New Year Parade is always a highlight in Sydney's Chinese New Year celebrations. This year the parade was held at night-time for the first time, a move that brought a new dynamic of darkness and neon.We took up positions on Goulburn Street at 6.00pm. Originally advertised as starting at 7.30pm, the heaving crowds were getting restless and a little agitated by

Ocean Room, Sydney

Soft shell crab tacos Spiced, crispy fried served with pickled vegetables and crispy wafersSoft shell crab tacos. You may as well substitute those four words with "heaven in every mouthful". And whilst soft shell crab seem to be as ubiquitous as pork belly on restaurant menus, I think that Raita Noda's version is one of the best.Once his signature dish at former restaurant Rise (a dish I first

An early and very special arrival

Let me introduce you to our little baby girl. We don't know her name yet, as she was in a bit of a hurry arriving into this world, so K. and I are still discussing the possible options. But she's gorgeous, and despite being few weeks too early, she's doing very well. So are her parents :) She arrived into this world at 5.52 pm on Friday, January 30th, weighing in at 2460 grams and 48 cm.

The picture above is taken this morning, when she's about 40 hours old (young?).

As we'll be spending the next week or so recovering at the birth clinic, there won't be much cooking happening at Nami-Nami household at the moment. But don't despair - this might just give me a chance to finally tell about those fantastic food-related trips to Spain (meal at El Bulli!) and the US we had last summer.

Life is beautiful.